Between Conversations
by Chiba.Kun
Summary: Snake is gone. Everyone searches but Aoi; he finds someone else. (Clover/Santa)


He finds her in the hallway by herself, tears running wildly down her face, shoulders trembling and hands shaking, but she's completely silent. Aoi knows he should turn tail and head back the way he came, play at being Santa, aloof and insensitive, but his feet stay firmly in place. The girl thinks she's just lost her brother, and he's the one to blame - at least partially - and he knows from personal experience just how devastating that feeling of loss is.

So he walks toward her, hands in his pockets. Clover doesn't notice him right away, but when she does she turns around and furiously wipes at her eyes, as if doing so would make him forget he just saw her crying. It would be cute if it wasn't so tragic.

His heart twists as he remembers the pile of ash slipping through his fingers to the floor of a still-warm incinerator. Even know, when he's so close to having a changed history where his sister never dies, his stomach turns to ice and the floor sways beneath his feet. He knows exactly what she's thinking now, even without the morphogenetic field, and knows how much worse that will be when she finds the body. But still he walks toward her, all guilt and nerves and pity.

Aoi doesn't know what to say. He wants to tell her everything, anything to stop her from crying, to protect her from the pain he's carried for nine years. But he can't, so he just says, "Snake isn't dead."

She glares at him, but only for a second before she wraps her arms around herself and lets out a loud, broken sob. Before he can even think about what he's doing Aoi rushes to her and pulls her into his arms, letting her tremble and cry against his chest. He leans his head down and closes his eyes, telling himself he's doing this for her as he gets lost in the scent of her hair. He runs a hand through one of her pigtails, hoping it soothes her as much as it soothes him.

"He's not dead," Aoi mumbles into her. "He's not."

"How do you know?" she asks, voice crackling and breaking, so quiet Aoi can barely hear her despite how close she is.

He almost cracks then. He almost tells her that Snake's disappearance is a ruse, a trap set for revenge against the people that took her from her family and who took everything away from him. But he doesn't, he keeps pretending to be ignorant, defiant Santa, and says, "Because your brother's not stupid. The ninth man died because he broke a rule, right?" He fights the urge to add on that he would have died anyway, but doesn't, and continues: "I don't think Snake's the rule-breaking type. And he's too smart to get tricked."

Clover shakes her head, unconvinced. "B-but someone... might have..."

Aoi shakes his head and hold Clover at arm's length, looking directly into her red, puffy eyes. He wipes away a tear when she opens her mouth to say something else, and she goes slack again. Whatever fight she has in her keeps leaving and it hurts Aoi to see her like this. This isn't the feisty teenager he'd tracked for weeks. She isn't the bubbly, sassy, stubborn girl that talked back and refused to go through a door without her brother. She's something else now and Aoi wants her to change back.

"Don't even think about it," he tells her. "Nobody would get anywhere by..." he doesn't want to say _by killing Snake_ , so he lets the insinuation hang. "Besides, everyone else around here is too fuckin' stupid to pull something like that off. You think Junpei has that kinda smarts in him? Or Seven?"

Clover's lips twitch into an almost-smile and he lets out a short burst of air through her nose. It's as close to laughter as Aoi thinks he's going to get from her so he smiles and wipes away another tear. But something falters in him: he wants to pull her back into his arms. He wants to protect her and keep her safe while her brother can't. He wants to kiss her. For a second he thinks he might, but he stops himself before he can make any kind of move to do it. Instead he pulls away and rubs the back of his head sheepishly, turning from her to hide the blush that's covering his cheeks. He tries to play it off as if he hadn't just been thinking about how soft her lips might be or what her lip gloss tasted like, so he says, "Besides, he has a good luck charm."

The words are embarrassing enough that, in his mind, it seems perfectly reasonable Aoi can't meet her eyes. He stuffs a hand in his pocket and risks a glimpse over his shoulder at Clover. She's standing perfectly still, posture tight and muscles tense, and once more Aoi thinks about kissing her to calm her down. He still doesn't; he just walks away, leaving her alone to her grief.

"He can't die while he's got you."


End file.
